


Dreams of what could be

by obsessivewriter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:37:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivewriter/pseuds/obsessivewriter
Summary: The Lord of Storm's End returns to his keep after working the fields with his people, only to find the friend he has been longing for dismounting her horse. She is looking away from him and wearing her cloak when he embraces her from behind he finds something that wasn't there last time they were together.





	Dreams of what could be

**A drabble based on @[ninabonita4](https://ninabonita4.tumblr.com/) ‘s prompt.**

**Prompt: Arya returns to Gendry at Storms End after several months of travel. Only she returns obviously pregnant with his child**

* * *

 

It doesn’t happen the way he fantasized about it every day since she left. His daily reveries play before him endlessly, but none of them come to life: she doesn’t show up in his new forge at Storm’s End while he hammers away, nor she sneaks in quietly into the lord’s chamber in the middle of the night.

 

He has had time to imagine all the possible and impossible scenarios. Hells, he even imagined her rising from the waters in Shipbreaker’s Bay like a sea goddess. After all, he had nothing but time.

 

He doesn’t know how her faces work having only known however little Sansa told him, but he also wondered if she would come to him in disguise. Because of that, he would look in every new person’s face trying to find her stormy grey eyes. He stopped once he realized the servant girls interpreted his stares as open invitations to his bed. No, there was no need for that.

 

Uncountable fantasies spread out in the five moons since she left. Every night succumbing to exhaustion and his dreams of Arya.

 

No, it doesn’t happen in any of the thousands of ways he had envisioned.  
He hadn’t been in the forge nor in the training yard when she was finally conjured out of thin air. Instead, he had been working on the fields with his people instead when her pale horse runs towards the keep. Running by like a shooting star, her braided hair and her dark cloak flowing in the wind. She doesn’t see him, and Gendry fears it is just a trick of his sorrowful mind.

 

He runs towards the castle like he never ran before, not even searching for help beyond the Wall. When he arrives, lungs out of breath but his heart bursting with hope, he sees her dismounting while the stable boy holds her reigns. She is facing away from him and gently patting her mare.

 

Gendry, always scolded for his heavy steps, somehow manages to reach her before she turns, he embraces her from behind, running his hands under her cloak and resting his head on her wild hair. But while his hands used to quickly meet while enfolding her lithe figure, he is shocked by the expanse of her new form. It takes a moment for him to understand, and for her to turn around and look at Gendry with big startled eyes. Her cloak concealing her secret well.  
“Show me,” he commands, and she lets it fall.

 

And there it is, the unmistakable swell of life created amidst death.  
Gendry had dreamed about all the things he would say when he met her again, he flip-flopped between apologies for his failed proposal and reproaching her for leaving without saying goodbye. In the end, neither of them knows what to say, Gendry runs his hand over his shorn hair while slowly shaking his head. He opens his mouth, but no sounds come out. Arya only looks at him, her eyes wide and her left hand unknowingly resting on her swell. Her silence enrages him, and he feels his fury coming, but thankfully Ser Davos finds them and quickly understands.

 

“My lord, my lady. Mayhaps it would be best to have you reacquainted in the lord’s chambers, away from prying eyes."

 

"Thank you, Ser Davos,” Arya finally says, and Gendry gives the old man a nod.  
After a long and tense walk, they reach their destination.

 

“I didn’t mean for you to find out this way,” She says as soon as the door closes behind them.

 

“Fuck the way I found out, what I care about is why just now? Why did you wait this long? Were you planning on telling me at all?” He accuses.

 

“I didn’t know for a long time! King’s Landing… It was hell… You don’t know…” The horror in her eyes punches Gendry in the gut, she had never looked like that, not even after the long night when he had found her in the Godswood after she had vanquished death.

 

“Where did you go?” He asks approaching her but halting his hand from reaching out to her and brushing the stray hairs falling on her face.

 

“I’m not sure, right after the carnage, I was lost for days. Somehow I made it as far as the Riverlands. Nymeria found me there.”

 

“Your wolf?”

 

“Yes,” she replies, “I shouldn’t have been there.”

 

“No, you shouldn’t have been there on your own."

 

"I went with the Hound. Sandor is dead.”

 

“Still, I should have gone there to find you.” He responds.

 

“It doesn’t matter. It took me a long time to decide what I would do next. I never thought of life beyond completing my list. I didn’t want to go back North, and I almost went back to Essos.”

 

“To… the faceless men?” ’Jaquen,’ he thinks but stops himself from saying the name.

 

“You know?”

 

“Sansa told me.”

 

“Good. No, I thought of going south of Braavos and far east.”

 

A bitter thought pushing him to rage ‘She had meant to leave, and I would have never seen her again. Never known.’ But the fear of losing her again tempers his fury.

 

“Why didn’t you?” He asks instead.

 

“I stayed a long time in the wild with Nymeria. She took me into her pack,” He likes how her eyes softened talking about her direwolf.

 

“She licked my wounds and let me sleep against her until the nightmares stopped. She would place her head on my lap. I thought she was telling me she had missed me, but she rubbed her head against me so insistently,” her eyes wander while reminiscing and Gendry feels himself falling for her all over again with the twinkle he sees in her eyes.

 

“I still didn’t know. When I tried to leave Nymeria would stop me, and she kept rubbing her snout against my abdomen, and she started to howl. It was then that it dawned on me.”

 

“I did this to you,” he says daring to touch her bump.

 

“We did this.”

 

His eyes look at her intently and he says what was still bothering him, “but you still didn’t come right away.”

 

“No. I was afraid.”

 

“Of me? Damn it, Arya! You knew you had my bastard in you and that I asked you to marry me and you still didn’t come.”

 

“Don’t call it that!”

 

How could she not see it? That he had never wished to father bastards, to put a child of his through what he had gone through.

 

“That is what she or he will be,” he says forlornly. “Unless this is why you are here. Because I’ve forced your hand.”

 

The thought makes him sick to his stomach. That is not the love she may have for him, but the shackles he has placed around her, trapping her forever in a life she never wanted.

 

“No, you idiot!” She is now pulling him by the collar, so he is at her eye level. “I’m here because you are pack. My pack. I don’t want to be a lone wolf anymore.”

 

“You’ll be my family?” He dares to ask.

 

“I am already your family, and you are mine.”


End file.
